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Wednesday, June 21, 2017

SPOTLIGHT - Slipspace (Harbinger, #1) by P.C. Haring

Slipspace

Harbinger, #1

by P.C. Haring

Date of Publication: May
1st 2017

Cover Artist: Starla
Hutchton

Genre: Sci-Fi/Space Opera

Tagline:
The War went cold a decade ago…

BLURB

A fringe colony world has gone dark, and
Captain Cody Amado and the crew of the ISPA’s newest battle cruiser, Mjöllnir,
must respond and investigate. No one is prepared for the destruction that
awaits them.

Agendas collide as the bonds of duty,
loyalty, and family are tested, and the major governments position themselves
to prepare for what is to come next. With interstellar tensions rising, the
crew of the Mjöllnir race to discover the connection between the colony’s
destruction, an alien society so reclusive it has only been rumored about, and
an enemy that disappeared a decade prior.

Is this merely an isolated incident, or is
this a harbinger of much darker things still to come?

Morning came too soon for the Amados,
much to Nira’s chagrin. Together, she
and Cody made their way through the endless corridors. With the Mjöllnir just a few minutes out from
Artez, the decks were buzzing with activity as the crew prepared for as many
contingencies as could be planned.

They exchanged a brief kiss before
going their separate ways- Nira towards the Med-deck and Cody to OpCom as Cassie’s voice echoed through the
ship’s public address system announcing their pending arrival and setting the
ship at condition two. He stepped
through the hatch and found the ship’s command center no exception to the activity
about the rest of the ship. The traffic
on deck paused to give the Captain room to move to his station and log in.

“Give me a sit-rep,” The Captain
ordered.

Cassie stepped to the opposite side of
the central station. She betrayed no
anger or frustration. Any animosity she
had towards him lay buried behind as much professionalism she could muster.

“We can’t find an exit aperture.
According to navigational charts, we’re well within range of the outer
guide-buoys, but there’s no sign of them.
We’ve also tried to raise the gate on comms, but no luck.”

“Deploy a replacement buoy,” he spoke
to Cassie. “We’ll have to make a blind
exit. Hopefully it won’t be in the
middle of an engagement.”

He paused and reviewed the data. “Still, best be prepared.”

He stepped away from the console and
turned to the deck. “Sound General
Quarters! Set condition one throughout
the ship!”

The order relayed through the chain of
command. The Mjöllnir’s klaxon rang out
only seconds later and the already busy decks burst into further action. Two minutes later, Cassie turned from her
console.

“All rail positions are manned and
armed. Main cannons are charging. ECM is charging and calibrated full negative;
frequency coverage at ninety seven percent.
Replacement nav-com buoy has been deployed. ETA to Artez...,” she paused to check her
watch. “Three minutes.”

“Good work.”

“Captain, we’re close enough to pick
up preliminary data,” the navigator reported.
“Without the buoy, we’re without detail, but I’m detecting over one
hundred separate energy signatures. The
data is too obscure to plot an exit trajectory.”

The display in front of Cody updated,
a wave of distortion sweeping out from center, erasing old information and
leaving new data in its wake.

“There go my hopes of not walking into
a fight,” Cody muttered. “Pilot,
overshoot the combat area! Tear us an
exit to normal space and double back!”

“Aye, Skipper!”

The deck rumbled as the ship tore
itself into normal space. Without the
aid of a functioning gate, the transition came with far more violence. The ship shuddered and bucked, throwing both
Amados off balance, and a few crewmen to the deck. Cody and Melor exchanged looks of tepid
relief. He noted that even as an
emergency maneuver, one within the ship’s tolerances, the blind exit always
carried dangerous risk.

Power transitioned to the Mjöllnir’s
sub light engines as the pilots brought her about and proceeded on course at
flank speed.

As they approached the edge of the
zone, the first signs of debris floated past the ship. The pilot and navigator avoided it with ease
but soon found the ship surrounded by hull fragments from broken fighters. This was no surprise as fighter wings always
took high casualties.

Cody continued to study the
out-of-focus holograms on the central display.
The objects still showed as general spheres, indicating the sensor’s
inability to obtain a full resolution scan.

“Can we clear up this interference any
time soon?” Cassie asked.

In response, Melor turned to a
secondary console. “I’m trying,
Commander. There are a lot of cross
signals out there preventing us from getting a full resolution scan on the area.” She transferred a data module from one
console to another. The device whirred
to life as she accessed its programming.
“However,” she muttered as she worked, “I have a couple of algorithms up
my sleeve. I’m bringing them online
right...”

At the same time, all screens and
displays showing the battle zone refreshed to show its data at full
resolution. Melor, Aler, and both Amados
looked to the center and watched.

“My God,” Cassie muttered.

No one responded. Everyone’s eyes locked on the displays and
the sensor returns. Op-Com fell silent
save for the humming of the ship’s engines and the beeping of the
computers. No one moved, as they stood
locked in a trance of awe and horror.
The Mjöllnir’s engines powered down as they arrived at the
coordinates. What should have been a
fully functional slipgate was little more than a field of burning hulk and
slag.

“The station...it’s just gone,” Cassie
said, to no one in particular.

After what seemed like an eternity,
Melor turned back to her console.
“Sensors are detecting no weapon signatures, no power signatures...”

A fan of Science Fiction from an early age
P.C. Haring has always been one of those who looked up at the night sky and
wondered “what if…”

P.C. Haring made his debut as a writer and
podcast novelist on 01/01/10 with Cybrosis. This production met with a strongly
favorable response that propelled it to number four on the Podiobooks.com Top
Ten list when it was re-launched there that October. His audio fiction can also
be heard in Scott Sigler’s The Crypt: Book 1 — The Crew and in Philippa
Ballantine’s Chronicles of the Order anthology. His contribution for Tales from
the Archives, co-produced by Philippa Ballantine and Tee Morris, won him the
2012 Parsec Award for Best Short Story. This momentum propelled P.C. Haring
into publishing Cybrosis as well as his latest project, Slipspace: Harbinger
independently.

When he isn’t developing new projects for
podcast and publication, P.C. Haring works as a corporate accountant in the
Chicagoland area and as a husband to his beautiful wife.

I have read one book thus far and the review
Always Too Late (Micalea Smeltzer) is part of A Love for Romance Anthology but also a novella for the Willow Creek series. Taylor and Gabe have been friends for years. She has been his secret...